Review is for Xbox 360 Version
The RWC is on and here on my door step and the first Xbox 360 rugby games have hit the shelves. Now New Zealand have a team called the All blacks, not a famous team at all, well maybe a little bit, oh alright then probably the best know Rugby Team in the world one that isn't referred to by its country of origin, example "Looking forward to England vs Scotland tonight" is how you refer to every other team, "watching the All Blacks vs Argentina tomorrow" not watching New Zealand vs Argentina. Anyways a few years ago on the old original Xbox another slightly famous person called Jonah Lomu put his name to a game which was pretty entertaining, well he put his name to this one too in fact i think its only New Zealand that its called the All Blacks Challenge i have seen it called Jonah Lomu Challenge.
So the first thing you notice with this game is the detail of the graphics, they are awesome, the stadiums look very realistic and you can notice some of the players faces too very cool. when you get into the game play the first thing to do is run through the tutorials which are quite fun, you have a goal and have to complete the goal to go onto to the next tutorial these are all pretty easy and the controls are pretty easy to get to grips with.
One thing to remember is don't mash the buttons, nothing worse than the opposition breaking through your line to find that your full back is lying on the floor because he tried to tackle a ghost, owing to the fact you were in a panic trying to stop the other team breaking through your line and your full back got selected and remembered the 25 button combo you just hit.
So its pretty realistic but frustrating at the same time when a line break is made very difficult to chase down a player and 9 out of 10 times will result in a try. However you learn pretty quick to kerb that tendency to mash all your button and make your tackles when you need to.
Passing is done by using the shoulder buttons on the controller hold it down and the player will attempt a cut out pass, sometimes i found that the player will make a very strange random pass not to the player your trying to get the ball to or even more annoying just throw it out off the pitch.
One thing i wish had been added was a way to control the team and set up plays i.e. spread your players out in defence, compress your players in defence, set up a drop goal, so the player would drop back making it possible to even attempt one, in the game it is very frustrating and you often don't get the option as your getting tackled if you try.